"Come…let me tell you a story."
These are the happiest words a child can hear. As children, stories opened a world of imagination; they made us dream. Into adulthood we may have continued to read—over a cup of coffee or snuggled into bed.
Today as academics, we write, but mainly in peer-reviewed journals. But, don’t we have stories to tell too about our research? As someone who loves and believes in the transformative potential of a well-told story, we wanted to explore how we could use stories to make our research more accessible—and impactful.
Trees in cities of the Global South are urban commons supporting multiple ecosystem services. In our research on trees in Indian cities we have seen the important role they play from addressing the urban heat, as a source of food, and of sacred significance for city residents. Our research has been published in peer-reviewed journals—but we also wove stories about trees.
In “Cities and Canopies: Trees in Indian Cities” (Penguin Viking, 2019) we share recipes, games, and myths along with information on species and ecology. “So Many Leaves” (Pratham 2022), is an illustrated book on the fascinating world of leaves for young readers. “Where have all our gunda thopes gone?” is an illustrated multi-lingual story about the transformation of a wooded grove, an urban commons, to a landscaped park.
We wrote these stories hoping to reach out to a wider audience. Some have had an impact beyond what we imagined. The story about the groves was distributed across libraries in the state, as were worksheets for schoolteachers. An important impact was the government order passed requiring villages to protect and maintain the groves.
We would like to share ideas, challenges, and learn ways of writing ‘un’common stories about urban commons.
